Conceived and conducted when the war was expected to continue until at least 1946, the aggressive operations fought in New Guinea and Bougainville during 1945 were initiated in order to shorten the campaigns with the ultimate goal of freeing up Australian manpower. They were also fought in accordance with the Australian Government's long-standing desire to see its troops shouldering such a burden of the fighting so as to ensure a favourable post-war position for Australia. Debate and controversy has surrounded these final campaigns ever since the war. In early 1945, for example, the United Australia Party's Senator Hattil Foll claimed that Australian forces were being ‘whittled away on a more or less “face-saving” task’ in New Guinea and Bougainville. The campaigns were debated in parliament while the press echoed these criticisms. The soldiers had their own opinions, too. Major-General Jack Stevens commented that his veteran 6th Division had not been happy with returning to New Guinea instead of participating in something that would directly contribute to ending the struggle. No one wanted to become any more involved ‘than was absolutely necessary’. Sergeant S.E. Benson was more direct, writing bitterly that it had been ‘a purely political decision’ to fight an aggressive campaign on Bougainville in an obviously ‘strategic backwater’.

Veterans, journalists and historians have often repeated this notion that the campaigns in Australia's Mandated Territories were an ‘unnecessary war’ in which men's lives were wasted needlessly for political rather than any strategic reasons. Some, most notably Charlton, have asserted that the campaigns were fought for the self-aggrandisement of old generals. The eminent historian David Horner, who has published more than anyone else on Australia's wartime strategy and high command, is one of the few people who have argued consistently that on balance the New Guinea and Bougainville offensives were ‘probably necessary’.